Techno Pioneers Porter Ricks Return, As Philosophical As Ever

Given Porter Ricks’ commitment to the psychedelic properties of sound, it seems only fitting that the German duo’s echo is gradually getting louder.

The first chapter of Thomas Köner and Andy Mellwig’s collaborative catalog amounted to a short, sharp shock: Between 1996 and 1999, on just a handful of records, they twisted dub techno into wild, abstracted shapes influenced by underwater acoustics and tidal flux—an approach equally as radical as that of minimalist pioneers Basic Channel, whose Chain Reaction label published much of Porter Ricks’ best work.
Then, nothing: By the turn of the millennium, Porter Ricks had gone silent, with Köner and Mellwig returning to their respective solo projects.

More than a decade later, though, their unsteady thump began to make itself heard again. The Type label reissued their long out-of-print debut album, Biokinetics, in 2012, and the following year, Porter Ricks resurfaced to play Krakow’s Unsound Festival. It would have been easy to read both events as early stirrings of nostalgia for a period that had faded into the background, obscured by successive waves of dancefloor trends. But then, last year, Porter Ricks came back with a new EP, Shadow Boat, and this month they release Anguilla Electrica, their first album in 18 years. If longtime fans were told that either record had been made in 2000, there would be little reason to believe otherwise: The billowing atmospheres and sludgy beats are a direct extension of Porter Ricks’ earlier work. If anything, the new music is slightly more corroded, like a barnacle-encrusted shipwreck slowly flaking away in the deep.

This sense of continuity might have to do with the fact that Porter Ricks never actually went on hiatus, Köner tells me when I speak to the two musicians via Skype recently. “It’s more like if you boiled water on a low flame and eventually it starts making bubbles,” he says.

Not unlike their music, a conversation with Köner and Mellwig doesn’t necessarily proceed in a straight line. It moves more like a field of seaweed swaying this and that way—an unhurried tangle of ideas, metaphors, and philosophical references. The fact that both musicians are speaking from their respective studios surely adds to the circuitous nature of our conversation. “Because Porter Ricks is a philosophical project, if we are in the same room we end up discussing,” says Köner, “so to keep the focus on the sound, we are much better off if we are not in the same room [while we work].”

There’s also the fact that Mellwig prefers to phrase his long, thoughtful answers in German, leaving it to his partner to translate them into English. When I express my surprise that such strikingly physical music is created by two artists who aren’t even in the same place at the same time (instead via file-sharing round-robin), a lengthy discussion ensues in German. Finally Köner addresses me. “Philip, you’re surprised that such a muscular and intense and sweaty sound is not actually produced in a muscular and sweaty manner?” That’s a pretty fair summary, I tell him.

“Well, we would say that this is based on your dualistic way of understanding,” Köner replies. “We try not to follow this separation of mind and body. This is obviously one of the philosophical threads that we are engaged in, and we are working on expressions that relieve us from this dualistic practice.”

Well, sure.

Later, when I ask about the custom software the duo uses, Mellwig replies with a lengthy discourse, again in German, about digital and analog technology, and the quality of light as it shines through water. My German skills have atrophied to the extent that I can’t make out anything more than that. But his metaphor—indeed, the very act of not entirely understanding him—feels entirely appropriate for Porter Ricks, a duo that has for more than two decades played with ideas of clarity and obfuscation in the most literal sense possible, conjuring a vast expanse of sound that takes on the precise qualities of, yes, light shining through deep water.

Pitchfork: What was the catalyst for getting back together—the Biokinetics reissue in 2012?

Thomas Köner: No. The catalyst for this goes back to the ’90s. We never really switched off.

Yet 1999 was your last recorded output, and then Porter Ricks was put on hold until 2012.

TK: Was it? From our perspective, Porter Ricks is a dialogue between me and Andy, and this dialogue has continuity. Of course from an outsider’s view, there is also the expectation of delivering output, in terms of tunes and production and all of this. But this has never been our main concern. This maybe explains the project array of our career, which is odd, admittedly.

How long had you been working on new material before putting out the Shadow Boat EP last year?

TK: Four years, maybe.

Prior to that, had there been a period where you hadn’t actively been working on Porter Ricks material?

TK: Of course. In the beginning, it was like a big bang, a very intense appearance on the scene. Our interest was not to be determined by our talent, which we obviously have in some respects. What usually happens if people are determined by their talent, they end up in a kind of nine-to-five position, almost as if they had an office job, turning out tracks and remixes and DJ sets and whatever. This was totally not what Porter Ricks was about. It really started as a conversation about sound and music and how it is perceived. Andy, do you agree?

Andy Mellwig: Yes. Our intention is to develop more subtlety in contemporary electronic sounds. We don’t like nostalgic projects. We have disparate interests and many philosophical concerns. In the past 10 years, I have realized music in the classical tradition—I have composed for strings, brass, and electronic, and alp-horn! The re-release of Biokinetics was… a call from the scene.

TK: I would almost say that in our solo activities there is an overarching line of thought that is Porter Ricks itself. Our solo work delivers the details. So occasionally we have to go back to our corners and study and research these details to be able to bring it back into the Porter Ricks project, and into the dialogue.

When you resumed making new music together, what kind of discussions did you have about how you wanted the music to sound?

TK: I don’t know if we work in this way. We allow the sonic qualities themselves to develop their own momentum. It’s a kind of humbling experience to put the sound first instead of the statement.

AW: [Answers in German.]

TK: Andy thinks that the dialectical approach is most important. We are fascinated by the club and the dancefloor; we are also fascinated by very nuanced sonic experiences, and somehow we are convinced that we can bring together these two contradictory forces and create some kind of sonic supernova. This would be the candle that has always been at the center of our project.

I’m struck by the physicality of your sound. I wish I had a better language for it, but it feels like something you could reach out and touch.

TK: I think what you can really hear and feel is the amount of work that goes into these tunes. Some take a year to finish. This is insane, really.

It’s interesting that you mention there’s a language lacking for this, because for us, this is the language. It’s a non-verbal language, but obviously one can understand it. This is something, maybe, that has become a bit out of fashion in contemporary music. The idea that you can create your own language and your own form of expression that is very personal and subjective, but still totally global and addresses everybody who is willing to listen.

In the late ’90s, the Chain Reaction label and the artists around it seemed to embody a kind of utopian ideal for club music.

TK: There was a period when this utopian scenario was almost true—when we felt that you could do almost anything in a club, as long as it was any good. There was no rigid expectation from the audience as to how it had to be delivered. But this didn’t last very long. It was almost palpable, the decline of this in the new millennium.

I remember periods where we didn’t even have beats in our club sets, but people kept dancing. The beat wasn’t even necessary, because it was a biokinetic experience—that’s our metaphor for the dance and the body and all its expressions. From today’s point of view, this would be totally impossible.

What do you think changed in Berlin, or in techno, that brought about the end of that utopian moment?

AW: I think there was a change in the direction of functional fun.

TK: What started in an organic way, as chaotic and unstructured, became more and more formalized and normative. Even if it was ecstatic, it was still arranged like an Excel spreadsheet.

You refused to give up on the dancefloor, though; as experimental as your music is, it’s still made for people coming together. Do you ever feel frustrated by a lack of spaces where you could really bring your music to life?

TK: No, I would say it’s the opposite. It’s the utter joy and happiness that this is possible. Maybe it’s good that we are so slow with everything. We were saved from the damages that took place in the last 10 or 15 years in the scene.

You dodged that bullet.

TK: Maybe just by instinct. It’s not that we said in 2003, “The empire will strike back now, we have to seek shelter and come back in 10 years.”

You somehow knew it deep down?

TK: I could feel it. If you spent your weekends in the clubs, you could see the change in the eyes of the people. They became merciless, in a way, in their desire to be entertained.

You took your alias from a character on Flipper, which seems like an oddly kitschy inspiration for such serious music. You’ve previously said that your name was meant to evoke the concept of heroism. What does heroism have to do with experimental techno?

TK: We believe in the joy and power of music, and we also see that to make this kind of statement today, you need to be a hero, because there are more dominant beliefs—like the belief in power itself or in fame or in money. Our belief in the power of music is something that really needs a strong position in order to keep it up for a lifetime—and hopefully even beyond. We don’t want to miss out on the chance to give food for thought to other generations that may relate to it in a way that is not yet foreseeable.